Friday, April 24, 2009

So, I just sent off my thesis draft. Just for kicks, I went back and looked at my first one. Wow, what a major difference. That's why she gets paid the big bucks.

I know length has nothing to do with it but draft one was 35 pages, draft two was 45, draft three was 52, and draft four is 63. It definitely still needs finesse, but I think the bones are there. Last night (and the night before), I just couldn't think. My analysis and conclusions were just *poof* gone. Today, I was on a roll. Good thing, 'cause she wanted it back today.

In other academic news, I got the last of four PPT presentations turned into my GIS professor yesterday. I spent the morning doing some research on the paper he wants me to write - my last requirement for my last class. Unfortunately, it's a 2500-3000 word requirement, which is roughly 8-10 pages. Bleh. However, it's on a topic I'm interested in (GIS in education - he wanted it to mirror my masters research, but there's no way to add GIS into my ability group thesis, so I went with a more broad topic) and there's TONS of stuff out there. (Which means I have a crap-ton o' papers to read!)

Oh! I just got an acknowlegement email from my advisor. She got it, will read it over, and get comments back this weekend. She knows the deadline is coming up fast, and I hope the rest of her life takes a break for a day or two so she can focus on ME.

She wants to have it out to the committee early next week and schedule the defense 5-10 days (ish) after that. But first, she has to approve it for committee.

Monday, April 06, 2009

While there's quite a bit of work yet to do, I'm confident that we'll be able to get it together. Hopefully by graduation, but I've been told I can participate in commencement even if it's not completely done.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

I emailed the first full draft of my thesis to my advisor on Friday. She sent me a reply soon after, saying she'd look at it and get comments back the next day.

I hovered near my laptop all day yesterday. No comments.

This morning, I emailed back: "Is it so bad that you're still writing comments?" She replied that she's still looking through it and she'd respond in a few hours.

Those hours have come and gone...

This is an entirely new kind of anxiety for me. Having never done this before, having no rubric (so to speak) on how to write up a thesis for this particular project, I have no idea if what I've written is even the ballpark with 'good enough'.

Is it just needing a bit of tweaking? Does it need to be overhauled? Do I need to delve into the statistics a bit more (please no! I've had number nightmares for weeks now!)??